Archive for January 2nd, 2013

I have no problem with giving parents tours of the food services tax payers fund, but to segregate those tours based on ethnicity is sheer madness—there is apparently no attempt to assimilate immigrants in cities being taken over by assorted refugee/immigrant groups! Just like the ‘culturally appropriate’ day care centers we pay for, stunts like this one only seek to further divide people.

And, let me ask you? If while you were in school, or when you had kids in school, didn’t you just bring (or send) a brown bag lunch from home if you, or your kid, didn’t like what was on the school lunch menu. Is that forbidden now? LOL! I detect Michelle Obama and the food fascists lurking somewhere behind all this.

Here is the story that has me steaming this morning, from the Minneapolis Star Tribune (we assure you that we don’t serve pork in our school system!):

School was out, but for the Somali families touring the St. Paul school’s central kitchen on a recent Friday, it was a time to learn — and to ask important questions.

Mothers went past gleaming kettles and walk-in ovens, and then stopped at a photo display of what looked like pork products,consumption of which is forbidden in the Muslim world.

Questions flew, among them: How could pepperoni be anything but pork? But after being assured that it was chicken or turkey, and that, in fact, St. Paul’s menus were entirely pork-free, the women, satisfied, joined a line serving a school lunch for dinner.

Everyday life can get complicated in a district where students speak more than 100 languages and dialects. Lunch preparation can be a source of mystery, too, for new immigrants, and to ease concerns the district has begun hosting kitchen visits for its Somali, Karen, Hmong and Latino parent groups.

St. Paul’s nutrition services budget is $24.9 million annually, with $21 million covered through federal reimbursement. Last week, Jean Ronnei, the district’s nutrition services director, acknowledged that to cover costs and remain self-sufficient, with no local tax contribution, you need customers — like any restaurant. But that’s not the reason for the outreach efforts, she said.

“We want to make sure our families are happy,” Ronnei said.

We promise! No pork served here!

After receiving cookie samples, the guests moved on to the display of pork lookalike products, and at the very front, asking questions of nutrition specialist Tessa Acker, was Basro Mohamud, the mother of a Cherokee Heights second-grader.

One day, Mohamud said, her son, Hamza Abdiwhab, 10, told her that he’d been given a ham sandwich at school. He assured her he was careful to remove the ham, but she didn’t want him to eat the bread, either. Since then, she has told him: “Just eat the fruit.”

Acker explained that what appeared to be ham stacked in a sandwich actually was smoked turkey. But Mohamud pressed on. What about the hot dog casing? she said. Eventually, she was put at ease, and for Hamza, that could be good news.

Asked if her son might now be eating corn dogs, she replied: “Next week.”

“Today was a really hard day since aside from going to work, we didn’t leave our homes. We are afraid of the police and afraid of the Israelis, hatred is felt on the streets.” This is how Salman, 32, a Sudanese asylum-seeker has described the situation in south Tel Aviv.

Salman, like many of his friends and acquaintances who live in the vicinity of Tel Aviv’s central bus station, fears the vengeance likely to take a toll following the arrest of the Eritrean man suspected of raping an 83-year-old woman.

Go to the YNet story from the day before about how the “horrendous rape” of an old woman rattled the neighborhood, here, leading to the demonstrations.

“Refugees” say they aren’t all criminals and say the Israelis just don’t like blacks. The migrants to Israel have had it good so far, they aren’t placed in detention as they are in Australia. (Australia faces criticism daily for that detention policy).

A refugee from Darfur, who infiltrated Israel two years ago said that “the situation is really difficult here, we hear people calling out ‘we don’t want the Sudanese’ and we stay in our homes. The Israelis don’t differentiate between us – to them, we are all black.

“I want to tell them that we are not criminals we are refugees who fled war. Just like in every place, there are people who commit crimes but most of my friends and I just want some peace and quiet.”

Residents: deport them all.

As a result of the horrifying rape of the elderly woman, an uproarious demonstration was held on Monday night in which dozens of south Tel Aviv’s residents and right-wing activists demanded the deportation of the African migrants.

Greece, the European country whose name we invoke when we worry about financial chaos coming to America has one up on us with its newest strategy to seriously close the border. Most Greeks blame the flow of illegal impoverished migrants into Greece in the last ten years as the source of much of its financial ruin.

But, check this out! Some sections of the Greek border are now sealed!

Orestiadas, Greece – A chief of police in a border town in northeastern Greece says irregular migrants are no longer crossing into the country from its land border with Turkey.

Barbed-wire fences, landmines, thermal night vision cameras and regular patrols are among the tools used to stop a phenomenon the Greek state considers a national security threat.

Some 55,000 people were detected attempting to wade across the Evros River into Greece from Turkey in the region in 2011.

The figures have now dropped to near zero, says Pashalis Syritoudis, director of police in the run-down Greek border village of Orestiadas.

“In July 2012 we had 6,500 illegal migrants who passed the border. In August, we had only 1,800. In September, only 71 illegal immigrants, in October only 26 and now there are none,” he told EUobserver on 22 November.

[….]

He says the trend stopped since Greece launched Operation Xenious Zeus in early August.

Migrants are now targeting the more treacherous sea crossings near Lesvos, Sumos, Symi and the Farmkonis islands instead.

“We have given a very clear message to the facilitators [migrant smugglers] and their source countries in North Africa and other countries that Evros is no longer an easy passage to enter Europe,” Syritoudis noted.

The mission of the TCPJ is to educate by disseminating accurate and documented information that concerns the rights of and justice for all Tennesseans so that policy makers will be better equipped to make informed decisions on behalf of their constituents.